Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-04-13 01:44
I like Liquorice's comments about how aware jazz players are of whether they are playing on, ahead of, or after the beat. Clarinet instruction often pays much more attention to fingering, tuning, articulating, and phrasing than to rhythm and meter. Many students would benefit from extensive practice in what Pasqual Bona called "Rhythmical Articulation" in an old voice training book of the same name (which every clarinet student should be able to read through with great rhythmic awareness and accuracy.)
There are several books that go beyond Bona's in drilling the basics of rhythm. Joe Allard's Advanced Rhythm book is very hard work to play through both in regular and especially in cut time. He gets you used to some very awkward rests, ties, and rhythms that most practice books ignore but regularly occur in music. Jeanjean's Etudes Progressive et Melodique (books 2 and 3) place rhythms side by side that sound similar but not identical, and it is great discipline to learn to differentiate them, especially since you also have to fight through difficult key signatures. Paco D'Rivera's 8 Etudes for Latin Jazz have tricky syncopated patterns that really make you listen and count and feel where the beat is (just as Allard's book does). Reading modern jazz charts (or practice material written by competent people to faithfully represent those charts) has a great transfer value to classical clarinet. Two good practice books are Bob Mintzer's 12 Contemporary Jazz Etudes and Bob McChesney's Jazz Etudes and Jazz Duets.
These are available on Internet. Anyone who can play fluently through them will have developed a solid grasp of rhythm and meter. Other useful practice books are Lennie Niehaus's three Jazz Conception volumes (based on be-bop) and the general intro book, Music Speed Reading for Beginners by David Hickman. Hickman stresses reading notes and rhythms in recognizable units, a concept sometimes known as "chunking." Bill Douglas (Stolzman's musical partner) stresses similar rhythmical ideas in his Vocal Rhythm Etudes, now available from reallygoodmusic.com. Players who can "chunk" through many many rhythmic combinations, always knowing and feeling where the elements of a pattern lie in relation to the beat will be much less nervous in performance than those who can't. Clarinetists who don't work to develop a solid sense of rhythm will have much to be nervous about. One reality check is to go through Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs, and clap and sing not just the clarinet part but the sax parts too, and then go back and play each one on the clarinet. YouTube has an old 1950s performance of this piece, conducted by Bernstein, and featuring Al Gallodoro playing both the lead alto and the solo clarinet parts, without missing a beat.
Post Edited (2017-04-14 19:17)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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